Most excellent!!!  I haven't explored the terrain fractal for surfaces yet. I like how it looks here. I'm glad this thread became so informative and experimental.

Question......What are those 'composer' nodes I see there and why do you have 'offset' at the top like that? Not quite sure what offset's all about.....

Here's my latest experiment......an ode to Fallout 3.....all Vue except for the color in the rocks which is an image map. Displacement is used in the pebbly ground noise. That's basically sick rock bump inverted and pebble noise function.

I managed to get some nice cleavage in the main rocks by using a basic repeater of crystal stretched along one axis then rotated laterally. Duplicated vertically and blended. They aren't straight up and down but tilted slightly. Fractures and facets in nature are rarely at 90 degrees.